1. Field of the Invention
The subject invention relates to gun mounts and, more particularly, to a universal gun mount featuring a rotated version of the M242 25 mm Bushmaster chain gun with an improved linked ammunition feed system.
2. Description of Related Art
A typical linked ammunition firing gun in the U.S. arsenal is the M242 25 mm Bushmaster chain gun. The gun may be turret mounted in an infantry fighting vehicle and has a dual feed apparatus for alternatively feeding high explosive (HE) or armor piercing (AP) rounds into the gun for firing. In this operation, two bands of ammunition, HE and AP, must be simultaneously provided to the feeder apparatus during operation of the gun.
In the M242 chain gun, linked ammunition supplies the HE and AP rounds. Linked ammunition is ammunition held together by coupling devices (links) which enables the ammunition to be pulled into the gun's receiver as it is fired.
The M242 chain gun has typically been mounted in a turret such that the linked ammunition belts feed up and into the gun at an angle as illustrated, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,781,100. In this position, the feed paths of the feeder assembly are approximately horizontal and accept the ammunition from the left-hand side of the weapon.
It has appeared desirable to provide a universal gun mount employing the M242 chain gun which could be mounted on various types of wheeled and tracked vehicles. However, attempts to provide such a universal mount have encountered difficulties, particularly in achieving satisfactory feeding of the linked ammunition to the gun.
The linked ammunition is typically fed to the M242 chain gun through so-called flex chuting. This chuting presents difficulties to reorienting the gun with respect to its mounting in that flex chuting is relatively inflexible and presents difficulties in changing feed angles. A particular difficulty is that, as the gun is elevated or depressed, the flex chuting is subjected to severe twisting, and thus becomes bound and causes excessive loading, affecting the gun rate and potentially jamming the system.